A WHISTLEBLOWER has claimed approvals for two multi-billion dollar gas export projects in Australia were waved through government despite warnings that key information on a range of environmental impacts were either missing or inadequate.

Environment assessment specialist Simone Marsh, who had been on secondment to the Queensland Government's Department of Infrastructure and Planning when the projects were being assessed in early 2010, has spoken of a process where approval of the projects was never in question. Commercial and economic interests were put above environmental concerns.

“All the scientific arguments in the world wouldn't have changed things in that situation,” Marsh told the ABC's investigative journalism documentary program 4 Corners. “They had decided that they wanted to go ahead with the projects and there was nothing stopping it.”

Documents obtained by 4Corners under Right to Information laws in Queensland also reveal how a state government department tasked with assessing the environmental impacts of the projects were looking to provide the state's co-ordinator general with a “bankable outcome” on which to approve the projects.

The 4 Corners program looked at two major projects costing US$38.9 billion that would drill thousands of wells into coal seams in Queensland and, with the help of hydraulic fracturing and 6500 km of access roads, extract gas and pipe it to a new export facility at Curtis Island beside the Great Barrier Reef. Some 26 million cubic metres are being dredged from Gladstone harbour for the export projects.

The $18.5 billion GLNG project is led by Australian company Santos, in partnership with Malaysian company Petronas, French multinational Total and the South Korean government's KOGAS, and won approval to drill 2650 wells and lay 435 km of pipeline in an $18.5 billion project. The $20.4 billion Queensland Curtis LNG Project is run by QGC - a wholly-owned subsidiary of UK-listed BG Group, formerly known as British Gas - and won approval to drill 6000 wells and lay 730 km of pipelines.

Simone Marsh told 4 Corners:

Initially it was quite obvious that the proponents were leading the process - they were dictating the speed at which it was progressing and they were dictating the meetings that were occurring. I think the truth is that it's not an ecologically sustainable activity. Obviously they didn't want to say that.

They wanted approval to come in and conduct that activity. They didn't want anyone to understand what the long-term impacts were going to be and the long-term costs associated with this activity. They're after a bankable outcome, which is not anything to do with an environmental impact assessment process.

They basically just want an approval. That's all they want is an approval with some conditions that the companies can live with.

One of the most controversial issues related to the CSG industry is its impact on groundwater - a vital water resource for the state's farming communities - and the potential for drilling and fracking to contaminate and deplete water bores. Yet Marsh claims that despite her internal protests, a decision was made not to have a substantive chapter on the issue in the co-ordinator general's final report.

Both QGC and Santos have defended their projects saying that they had provided all practical information to the government before the approvals were granted.

Ongoing research by scientists at Southern Cross University, also featured in the 4Corners program, recently found levels of the potent greenhouse gas methane in gas field areas at three times normal levels.

The 4 Corners program is only the latest to raise serious questions about the relationship between the Queensland Government and the multi-billion coal seam gas industry. In August 2011, it was revealed in the Brisbane Times how the Queensland Government did not know the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of coal seam gas and were instead relying on work paid for by the gas industry.

Brisbane's The Courier-Mail revealed in February how public servants were being rushed into the approvals. The newspaper uncovered an email which Marsh had sent to her bosses raising 26 major concerns about the Santos project. In the email, Marsh wrote

It is clear the project's activities will lead to widespread, serious environmental harm and material environmental harm, as defined by the Environmental Protection Act, both during and following the removal, transportation and processing of coal seam gas…. I am concerned that the proponent has in recent days been submitting comments and requesting alterations to the draft Co-ordinator-General's report and that paragraphs containing important text appear to have been deleted and other changes made in a non-transparent manner and without adequate justification.

Comments

This may have been covered in an earlier post. Lawrance Livermore has been looking into coal seam gas or coal bed methane or in situ retorting with the DOE and other for a while. Possibly since the 70s when there was funding to tap into every last domestic subsurface hydrocarbon. Here's LLNL's webpage on the subject:

While the doability seems high for CSG based on pilot scale studies and apparently Aussie based initial development and commercial endeavors - my gut says the volatiles from methane to god only knows what are going to go all over the place. My guess is up towards the surface. Plus, once a portion of the coal bed mass is extracted, how would this not cause major subsidence?

This doesn't surprise me. I've seen how environmental politics works in Queensland.

I had a housemate who learned that her local councillor in Ipswich was lieing about a new aluminium extrusion plant being built next to a primary school. He claimed that Queensland Health had approved the project as posing no health risk.

She found that suspicious and as she happened to work for Queensland Health, she phoned the people who had supposedly made this claim. They initially said they had no idea what she was talking about but would look into it. When they called her back they said not only had they not approved this project but they had no knowledge of it and no-one in their division qualified to comment on it.

So she got involved - to the point of paying an independent scientist to collect pollution data in the nearby locations where the EPA had apparently found neglible pollution. This was quite odd given the site was surrounded by a very busy highway and other industrial plants. The independent scientist concluded that the EPA had obviously faked their data. Even taking into account variable weather conditions there was no way the data they claimed to have gathered could be genuine. The real pollution levels were very high.

Letters to both the then Premier Peter Beattie and opposition leader Lawrence Springborg achieved nothing. What she learned was that this was a pet project of Beattie's and he had lured the developer to Queensland with the promise that he could find a site in a populated area - something they'd tried but failed to do in NSW. Local council zoning laws in Brisbane made that impossible but at the time that wasn't a problem in Ipswich.

Eventually the ABC got wind of the story and someone from Stateline or Lateline contacted my housemate and asked if she was willing to be interviewed. She was, but was also a bit concerned about her job. She checked with QLD Health's media people and asked if there was any potential conflict of interest. They said they didn't think so but would get back to her with a definitive answer. They didn't. The Director of Qld Health did.

The government knew who she was but until that point hadn't realised she worked for them. Now the Director didn't say she couldn't talk to the media and he didn't explicitly threaten her. What he said was, “Think about who your boss is.” She said, “QLD Health”. He said, “No. Think higher.” She said, You.”. He said, “No. Higher still.” She said, “Peter Beattie.” He said, “Yes.”

She had a mortgage, was working on a PhD and couldn't afford to lose her part-time clinical work with QLD Health. So she agreed to back off.

He also told her that QLD Health (i.e. he) was aware they'd been misrepresented in this matter, weren't happy about it and had fought to get the scope of the plant scaled back. Also for real pollution testing to be conducted. It was and when that data was published they found the pollution levels so high that they were literally off their scales.

A few months after agreeing to do what the government wanted to help hide their misdeeds she was personally invited to apply for the position of Director of Clinical Psychology at the PA Hospital. That was a HUGE promotion from her part-time clinical job. She did. Despite the other applicants being more senior and more qualified, she got the job.

That's how environmental politics works in Queensland.

Calls for the CMC to get involved won't do anything. They'd easily be the most corrupt body in the state.

During these events Channel 7 News reported that several Ipswich Councillors claimed they were being bullied by the CMC. No details were given on how or why but I know that several Councillors were very unhappy about the way this industrial plant project was being handled. Some were leaking real information to counter the misinformation campaign. It would not surprise me to learn the CMC was trying to bully them into silence.

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE